Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It (16 page)
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Authors: Maile Meloy
Tags: #Fiction, #Short Stories (Single Author), #General Fiction
Maile Meloy is the author of the story collection
Half in Love
, and the novels
Liars and Saints
and
A Family Daughter
. Meloy’s stories have been published in
The New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope: All-Story
, and other publications. She has been shortlisted for the UK’s Orange Prize, and has received
The Paris Review
’s Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, the PEN/Malamud Award, the Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a -Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2007, she was chosen as one of
Granta
’s Best Young American Novelists. She lives in Los Angeles.
ALSO BY MAILIE MELOY
A Family Daughter
Liars and Saints
Half in Love
Praise for Mailie Meloy
‘Though it might seem strange to praise a writer for
the things she doesn’t do, what really sets Meloy apart
is her restraint. She is impressively concise, disciplined
in length and scope. And she’s balanced in her approach
to character, neither blinded by love for her creations,
nor abusive toward them . . . She’s such a talented and
unpredictable writer that I’m officially joining her fan
club; whatever she writes next, I’ll gladly read it.’
Curtis Sittenfeld,
New York Times Book Review
‘[Meloy] cracks at our nagging desires to have it all . . .
in eleven tightly written, remarkably fluid narratives.’
Elle
‘Don’t let the easy accessibility of Maile Meloy’s
writing fool you; she’s capable of witchcraft.’
Time
‘The quite unastonished precision with which Maile
Meloy depicts the extent to which everything now
goes haywire in so-called ordinary American life is an
impressive achievement, literary and otherwise.’
Philip Roth
‘Meloy is able to give convincing voice to a huge range
of characters . . . she harnesses skilfully the power of
untold secrets that underlie the story.’
Guardian
Praise for
A Family Daughter
‘Wonderful . . . Meloy’s enthralling storytelling alternates
between dramatic narrative swoops and tiny moments
of emotional acuity.’
Marie Claire
‘A deliciously duplicitous book.’
Sunday Telegraph
Praise for
Half in Love
‘Maile Meloy writes with both fearlessness and true
compassion, two talents that are rarely combined.
In every story she creates a complex portrait of
such disparate lives that by the end of the book
I feel like I’ve seen half the world.’
Ann Patchett
First published in Great Britain in 2010 by
Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
First published in the United States in 2009 by
Riverhead Books, part of the Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
This digital edition first published in 2010
by Canongate Books
Copyright © Mailie Meloy, 2009
The moral right of the author has been asserted
The following stories have been previously published,
in slightly different form: “Travis, B.” (
The New Yorker
),
“Red from Green” (
The New Yorker
), “Lovely Rita” (
Playboy
),
“Two-Step” (
Zoetrope: All-Story
), “The Girlfriend” (
Prospect
, UK),
“Liliana” (
The Paris Review
), “Agustín” (
Ploughshares
),
“O'Tannenbaum” (
Granta
).
Grateful acknowledgment is made to reprint the following:
“Coming Right Up,” from
The Really Short Poems of A. R. Ammons
by
A. R. Ammons. Copyright © 1990 by A. R. Ammons. Used by permission
of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available
on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 84767 900 0
Book design by Amanda Dewey